


Scarlet

by Zaxal



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 23:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18200555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zaxal/pseuds/Zaxal
Summary: For a prompt on Tumblr: "Would you just hold still?"





	Scarlet

Tomas’s hands shake. He bites his lip, trying to steady them, as if holding his breath will give him strength he didn’t have before.

Red. The gash in Marcus’s side bleeds, open and deep, and he needs more than what Tomas can give him. The demon had moved faster than either of them had been ready for, the kitchen knife narrowly missing its target thanks to a lifetime of quick reflexes and a whip-sharp instinct. Tomas tries not to think of what would have happened if Marcus hadn’t moved, if the demon had gotten the blade in his gut. A visit to the small town’s clinic, an interview with the police. Names not given — not theirs, not the victim’s.

Lying is a sin, but forcing an innocent child of God to suffer with a demon inside them, without the hope Marcus brings in his wake — that is unforgivable.

Marcus bleeds red. Tomas’s fingers have drawn nonsense patterns trying to hold the gash closed with one hand, the other holding the needle and thread.

“Breathe, Tomas,” Marcus says, trying to reach out to him, his own hands stained but dried, hovering too close, too far from Tomas’s face.

“Would you just hold still?”

Marcus lies back on the bed, breath shuddering every time the needle scores through his skin, the thread tugging tight.

The stitch is going to be jagged and ugly. Marcus has many other scars, but this one is Tomas’s fault. It stands out in his mind against the tapestry he’s seen and now inadvertently added to. Scars from demons, scars from saving lives and souls. Each one proof of a hard life Marcus did not have to live and now marred by an incompetent priest’s hands.

Red marring white.

He ties off the stitch and fetches the first of many dressings they’ll probably go through. He swallows down an apology — he doesn’t deserve Marcus’s forgiveness for his ineptitude. Marcus pays for Tomas’s negligence with his body, and he doesn’t complain.

The wound now bandaged, Tomas reels, finally breathing, and it feels like the first time he’s managed to have clean air in his lungs since he saw the knife fall to the floor, covered in Marcus’s blood.

“Not bad for your first stitches,” Marcus says.

“I couldn’t stop my hands shaking.”

“Tomas,” and his words are red, the words of the Savior in the Holy Book, standing out to be found and read and worshiped. There is a gentleness to them, on the near side to a fury. The Father loves, but he also punishes.

Hands cup his face, and Marcus is suddenly _there_ , forehead against forehead, his piercing eyes closed. “You never should have had to do this.”

“Neither should you,” he says, tears stinging in his eyes.

“Tomas,” Marcus chides with a laugh, as if it’s so ridiculous that he deserved a normal life, a happy life.

Tomas’s heart bleeds red.

Without thinking, he brings a hand up, cupping Marcus’s neck as Marcus has so often done for him, keeping him near.

“I’m here, luv,” Marcus says as if Tomas is the one in need of comfort, as if it was Tomas who did a narrow dance with death today.

“You’re going to stay.” Tomas is horribly aware of his own selfishness, how he would trap Marcus in this longer by being a needy failure. But it means more than that. It means Marcus not bleeding out in some shitty motel in the middle of nowhere.

“Yeah. I’m gonna stay ‘til you’re tired of putting me back together again.”

His fingers tighten, a silent promise of _never_ so strong and fierce that he would brand it on his skin, iron and heat and red.


End file.
